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Saturday, August 25, 2012

Week in Review - Weeks 4 & 5

The view of the Lake during the Anniversary Party.

The last two weeks have been a little crazy! Last weekend we celebrated my parents 40th wedding anniversary with a surprise party. We took Friday off to decorate. Then, we celebrated my step mother-in-law's 70th birthday with a surprise party on Sunday. We had to drive down to Ohio, and made it literally moments before the birthday girl arrived. We had a fun evening with family and friends, then went to my sister-in-law's to spend the night. While there, Alex followed their dog into his crate and got himself bit on the arm. Most of the night Alex just cried, keeping us all up. When we returned home we noticed that he had some redness around the wounds, so we made a trip to the doctor and got him on antibiotics. Joe had his second round of poison ivy in as many weeks. He is covered from head to toe and has huge blisters on his hand. He's been unable to write, so he pretty much took this whole week off. On top of that my washer was broken for a week!

Alex giving Sarah a push at Bonnie's birthday party.

Sitting around the campfire.

Alex and Sarah sliding while everyone else went on a bike ride.

We kept things pretty basic. Math, grammar, phonics for Jada, reading, handwriting. Caleb completed another chapter in Physical Science and finished 2 more weeks of Writing with Skill. We spent last week studying ancient egypt, but didn't do any history this week. Caleb finished both Kidnapped and Babe: The Gallant Pig. Joe and Rachel read Babe: the Gallant Pig. Jada had a little trouble with Babe, so she read some Magic Treehouse books, instead. We started The Golden Goblet as our Read Aloud.

Sarah, Rachel and cousin Reuben "riding" on the horse while we set up for the party.

The candlelit pathway.

We attempted to mummify a chicken last week. We did the initial preparations and covered it in salts. We pulled it out the next day to rid the bag of any moisture and resalt ... and it smelled pretty bad. When we returned home after this weekend, I couldn't get either of the boys to resalt it, and I certainly didn't want to! We decided that we wouldn't see it through to the end, and threw an apple in the salt mixture instead. So ... we are chicken mummy failures! The part that makes it hardest is knowing that I could have made 3 meals out of that chicken, and instead it just ended up in the trash. I think they learned a lot about the mummification process, though, just from the initial work with it.